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本帖最后由 一问三不知 于 2011-3-5 14:04 编辑
ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics." 黄的是拼错的单词,显示不出来了,挺多的。红的是后改的,写了3个小时左右,前一小时刚320字……
Looking back to the history of the development of human society, truly we can find the significant role played by technologies. However, does it mean that our social customs and ethics are shxaped right and only by technologies? I can hardly agree with this statement. Not only is the role queried,but while technologies are influential to a society, other factors such as the circumstances of its location on earth, history events the society has been through serve to the formation of characters of a society too. Further more, consider the history of technological advances, I tend to say that technologies are also deeply affected by social customs and ethics.
Undeniable that, as the speaker noticed, technology influences our lives noticeably through out the world. Technology, including the latest and the oldest ones, especially the far-reaching innovations in history, often brought us to the new ages, for which examples in medicines and mechanics are easy to be found; events such as the discovery of DNA, industrial revolution and internet are evidences make importance of technologies clear. Besides, even the negative aspects such as greenhouse effects, environment pollution and nuclear abusing also illustrate how our lives can be changed. Not mention the latest and smartest methods of digging energy, building skyscrapers, are absolutely the engine of advancing the economical level society
However, it is not convincing to make technology a determining role in social customs and ethics formation, which is partially reflection of humanity and other occasional things such as the geography location, the long term history including political systems it chose and disasters it has been through. Customs and ethics of a society, country or community may be also a function of all those above. First, consider the old saying that, "even live standard are better now, the humanity has basically changed a little". This statement may be over generalized and depressive, yet it still makes senesce especially when faced with the darkest parts of humanity showed by such as wars and political and economical scandals. Second, different geography location and historical events may cultivate distinctive cultures. A country surrounded by ocean may be more aggressive and open-minded to explored unknown places like what the ancient Roman did; in the same time, a country inland like Greece may be more conservative and compatible and value classic arts and music. Besides, even the elites such as political leaders, celebrities in arts, music and literacy fields help to make a society distinct too. Clearly, under the same technological and economical conditions, a plenty of customs and ethics including value and moral standards are created and built in different places. Thus, we may only say that technology is an important chisel to shape a society but hardly the only one.
In fact, as constitution of an independent society, technological level is also mutually impacted by social customs and ethics. For instance, about 50 years ago, around 1960 in China, with the a value system of communism and an aggressive will to make it reality fast, the government held a land policy that farmers in smaller groups had to work and eat together and share grain afterwards, farm tools and bullamacows belonged the whole. The wish was good yet the reality went to a contrary way: hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger in three years after 1960, including a younger sister of my grandma, not even to mention the technological level in that time. Otherwise, providing a society chooses egoism and neutralism as its main stream value system, it is likely that the society is going be full of cheating and violence and have few opportunities to develop, so does the technology of it.
In conclusion, even though technologies are always enhancing the economical level of our lives and may thus indirectly enable human beings get more time thinking the meaning of life, amending customs ethical systems with particular value and moral standards, we shall notice that there are other functions serve to the formation of custom and ethics, and they are dispensable aside from the overwhelming striving on the improvement of social economical level. |
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